Membership

Satisfies 16 NYCRR Part 753 requirement to belong to a One-Call service

Access to and inclusion in many promotion and education programs (which may satisfy or count toward legal promotion and education requirements)

Dig Safely New York established a free cost structure based on the Mandatory Membership clause introduced in 1995 for selected entities.

Municipal entities, authorities, and water companies with fewer than 4,000 subscribers (Exempt Participating Members) receive one free basic service area, which includes a geodatabase (place, grid, or polygon), ticket-type routing, and automated delivery of the stakeout request. Additional delivery options may be purchased.

General

A member in the software system is a container for a company's hierarchy of service areas (SADAs), destinations, and billing options.

A member links to one or more service areas, and provides contact information regarding your organizational membership. The member entry is invoiced for any service area or destination billables.

Excavators are almost never exposed to the member layer of the system. Excavators only deal with service areas.

The Member data consists of the following information. Note that contacts can be re-used in multiple roles.

Member Name: Proper name of the company

Member_ID: Shortened version (up to 16 characters) of the member name

Administrative Contact: Person with final say over everything (usually referred to as Main Coordinator)

Alternate Contact: Person to contact if Administrative Contact is not available

Database Contact: Person with final say over any and all service area setups

Billing Contact: Addressee for invoices, or contact for any billing issues

Service Areas: One or more geographic areas (territories), used to segregate stakeout requests. A member typically divides its physical territory into service areas that correspond to where the locating crews are based.

Billing Structure

Each member shall pay such charges or fees in effect for its class of membership for Basic Services as shall be determined and/or otherwise fixed by the Board of Directors or pursuant to the General Operating Procedures and Responsibilities of the Corporation. Additionally, every member shall pay such charges or fees in effect for Extra Services, if any, as shall be determined and/or fixed by the Board of Directors or pursuant to the General Operating Procedures and Responsibilities of the Corporation

Billing Classes

As a result of the requirement for Mandatory Membership, Dig Safely New York has two classes of billing:

Exempt Participating Members will not be billed for the core services provided by Dig Safely New York, which consist of one free service area and one free delivery of any stakeout request for that service area. The destination of this delivery can change throughout the day, but additional deliveries (copies) of a given stakeout are billable. Core service does not include voice notification (a human physically dispatching the stakeout via telephone call or Late Notice Tickets). Finally, Exempt Participating Members are not exempt from the "1200 Fax Surcharge (described below). Any additional options are billed at a normal membership rate.

Participating Members: all other members

Billing Intervals

As of July 31, 2014, all Dig Safely New York customers are invoiced monthly or quarterly.

If you have any questions concerning our billing structure, please call Nicole Chapman, our Administrative Bookkeeper at 315-437-7394. You may also email Nicole at nechapman@DigSafelyNewYork.com. Please be sure to include your company name and contact information.

The Billing Strategy

To distribute operational costs in a way that accurately represents the processes, our billing strategy consists of the following three parts:

1. Basic Service Charge

The cost of processing a call in a given place is referred to as the basic service charge. It is paid for each notice created within the legally incorporated boundaries of each place covered by a service area. The charge is based on the unscreened call volume of a given place, to represent the actual workload performed by the call center on the service area's behalf. The specific charge per notice is based on the type of screening used by the service area (place, grid, or polygon).

The basic service charge is intended to evenly distribute the cost of processing a stakeout request among the service areas, as well as distribute the promotion and educational costs in an area.

The following rate selections are available to Dig Safely New York members:

Place: for members who choose to be notified for all calls in a place (or Grid/Place)

Grid: for members who choose to be notified for gridded regions

Polygon: for members who choose to be notified for arbitrary polygonal regions

Note: Calculation of amounts in this part is based on a rolling 12 month's volume.

2. Affected Service Area Charge

The cost of including a service area on a location request is referred to as the affected service area charge. Specifically, this charge separates the overhead from the actual delivery of a ticket. Service areas that receive multiple copies of a ticket (via several destinations or "copy stations") benefit from a simplified cost structure as a result of this overhead separation. Traditional "single copy" service areas will not be impacted by this split.

3. Notice Delivery Charge

A notice delivery charge is a charge for each excavation notice that is delivered, based on the method of delivery.

The following rate selections are available to Dig Safely New York members:

SOAP or e-mail

ASCII

Fax

Voice

Note that the entire concept of a "Copy Station" has been deprecated with the introduction of the Affected Service Area Charge.

4. Late Notice Charge

As of July 1, 2014, all members are subject to one Late Notice charge. The $2 charge will be incurred if a member does not respond to the Automated Positive Response (APR) system before the stated commencement date and time on a legal notification.